Defender

by Diana Palmer

  “What’s wrong?” Isabel asked.

  “That.” He pointed to the rearview mirror.

  She turned in her seat and saw it coming. The sky was a nasty green color. A whirling mass was coming toward them. “Paul! What do we do?”

  “We can’t outrun it, honey, and there’s no ditch. Get down.” He pushed her down and covered her with his body as the winds hit the car with the force of a bulldozer.

  She heard shattering glass and felt the impact of something besides wind, probably a huge limb off one of the nearby trees. She felt the heat and power of Paul’s fit body all along hers on the seat as he covered her, protecting her.

  “Not much longer,” he whispered huskily. His body was reacting to the closeness of hers in a way he couldn’t help. She was warm and soft and she smelled of wildflowers. One of Paul’s hands was braced on the seat, keeping them from pitching into the floorboard; the other was around her waist, pressed hard against her stomach. That hand began to move, softly, involuntarily, as the pitch of the wind decreased and the car stopped rocking.

  Paul felt his heartbeat racing. It had been a long time since he’d had a woman, and his dreams of Isabel lately had been hot and graphic. He couldn’t get the picture of her in that pink silk nightgown out of his mind.

  “Is it over?” she whispered. She sounded almost normal, but her body was tense, her back arching as he touched her, trying to get closer to him.

  “Mostly,” he whispered back. His hand was openly caressing her, moving up from her belly to the soft underside of her breasts and back again, sensuous, taunting.

  “Was it…a tornado?” she managed, because her voice, like her body, began to shake.

  “A little one, maybe,” he murmured. His face nuzzled against hers until it made its way under her hair to her neck. His lips moved into the soft, warm flesh. “Move back a little,” he groaned at her ear. “Closer, honey…”

  She was dreaming. She knew she was. Because his hand was insistent, forcing her pliant young body back into the changed contours of his, letting her feel the raging arousal that was making him hot all over.

  Those searching fingers moved up suddenly, right over the thrust of one small, pert breast, swallowing it whole while his forefinger nudged the nipple and made it go hard and sensitive.

  He made a rough sound in his throat. It wasn’t enough. Not nearly enough. His hand moved again, under her blouse, up to the bra’s clasp. He unfastened it with one hand, and then he was touching her, caressing her bare flesh hungrily, feeling her helpless response to his expert touch as she arched her body and moaned out loud.

  “Baby…” he groaned.

  He moved her, turned her over, so that he could see her flushed, hungry expression, see the turmoil in her blue eyes. Her whole body was trembling as she looked up at him, helpless to protest as his hand started up again, taking the hem of the shirt with it.

  “I want to look at you,” he said huskily. “I want to put my mouth over your nipple and suckle you until you cry out…!”

  She gasped at his graphic words, but she didn’t try to get away or catch his wrist. She shivered and her body moved restlessly on the seat.

  “Oh, baby,” he whispered, his face taut with desire as the fabric moved slowly, slowly, up past her rib cage toward the unfastened band of the bra. “I’ve dreamed about this…!”

  She arched toward him, her eyes closed, her body taut and tingling with new sensations, with new hungers that made her helpless, with an anguished, unfamiliar need. She poised there, her body arched, waiting, waiting…

  FIVE

  Just as Paul’s hand moved the soft cotton fabric of her shirt higher, his mouth poised over hers, his dark eyes burning with desire, sirens became audible, moving closer to them.

  He felt as if he were coming out of a trance. He looked down at what he’d done and flinched. What the hell had he been about to do? His face contorted as he pushed Isabel up from the seat and turned away while she frantically worked at putting her bra back on.

  A police car pulled up beside them and a tall policeman got out, noting the shattered glass of the back window and the small limb that had done the damage.

  “Are you folks okay?” he asked with concern.

  “Yeah, thanks,” Paul said, breathing in deeply. “I thought we’d bought the farm,” he added on a chuckle while he tried to divert the officer’s attention so that his hunger for Isabel wouldn’t be visible. He turned to her. “You okay, Miss Grayling?” he asked formally.

  “I’m…fine,” she said. “A little shaken, that’s all.” She smiled for the policeman and looked around at the shattered back glass. “We were lucky,” she added when she noticed the devastation all around them.

  “Very lucky. NOAA’s calling it a downburst,” the policeman said. “Did a lot of damage on this city block and just swept right over everything else.” He shook his head. “Go figure.”

  Paul got out of the car, his hunger finally tamed by doing math problems in his head. He grimaced when he saw the back windshield.

  “I guess I’d better get her home and call the insurance company,” Paul said. “She’d just signed up for law school, too.”

  The policeman smiled at her. “I’ve got a son who just graduated from it,” he confessed. “He’s going into corporate law.”

  “I’m going to get a job with the Jacobsville district attorney’s office when I graduate,” Isabel said shyly. “I’ve been plaguing them for years.”

  He laughed. “Not a job many people want. But good luck to you.” He shook his head as he surveyed the damage. “Need to go to the emergency room? We can take you over, if you want,” he added, indicating his partner, who was standing by the patrol car.

  “I’m fine. Not a scratch,” Isabel said. She couldn’t look at Paul. “My nerves are pretty raw, that’s all.”

  “Mine, too,” Paul said with a grin. “The car should be fine, once I remove the tree from it,” he added with pursed lips.

  “Let us help you with that.”

  The men got the limb out of the back window and one of the officers wrote up some notes on the damage for the insurance company. Paul said he’d get back with them about a copy of the report in a few days. Then he got Isabel back into the car, cranked it, waved to the police officers and started back toward Jacobsville.

  Isabel was too shocked and uncertain to speak, and Paul was too angry at himself.

  He turned on the radio to listen to the news, which was just reporting the damage in the small area where the downburst had happened. He kept it on and remained doggedly silent all the way back to Comanche Wells while Isabel stared out the window and ground her teeth at a moment that would live in her mind and her heart as long as she drew breath.

  He only wanted to forget it had happened. She knew that. He knew the difficulties and he wasn’t rushing to involve himself with a woman worth millions whose father would have him roasted on a spit if he knew he’d even touched her.

  But she was suddenly awake and aware in a way she never had been before. Her body knew passion, knew pleasure, knew the siren song of desire. Paul had touched her. He’d wanted her. She knew nothing of men, but her friends at college were open about their relationships. She knew what happened when a man felt desire. Paul’s body, at her back, had been raging with it. His hands on her had been hungry, out of control.

  But that was only desire. He was fond of her, but that was as far as it went. Today had been a spur-of-the-moment thing, a result, surely, of the burst of wind and the shattering of the windshield. It had been a moment of shared fear that had just gotten out of hand.

  For him. But for her, it had been a revelation. She’d loved Paul forever, it seemed. But he’d never touched her, not even when she’d tempted him by showing up on his bed in that slinky pale pink nightgown with her robe unfastened.
She’d given up hope that he was ever going to give her anything except grudging affection.

  Then he’d pushed her down in the car to shelter her. His voice, deep and soft as velvet, had been as caressing as those big, warm, rough hands on her untried body. In her whole life, no man had ever touched her like that, so intimately, so hungrily, without the slightest hint of restraint.

  She wondered how long it had been since he’d really been with a woman physically, because it had felt very much as if he’d been starving to death. She knew he dated; he’d made no secret of it. But if he didn’t have a steady girl, he was going without. Had that prompted his loss of control? Or had it been something else, something more…

  “Don’t sit over there and make love’s eternal dream out of what happened when the wind hit us,” Paul said curtly as he turned into the long driveway that led to Graylings. He glanced at her with cold dark eyes. “I haven’t had a woman in a while. I just lost my head. It was purely physical, Isabel. Nothing more.”

  Her knuckles were white where she clenched her purse to stop herself with crying out from the pain of what he was saying. She forced a smile and even looked at him with a calm face. “I know that, Paul. I won’t read anything more into it. Honest. We were lucky,” she added, glancing behind them at the broken glass all over the backseat where the limb had blown through it. “Just a foot or so more and it would have gotten us as well as the back glass.”

  “Yeah, I noticed,” he replied with a clipped smile. “I’ll get the insurance company on it first thing. They’ll send someone out to the house to fix it.”

  “Classes start next week,” she said, her eyes straight ahead. “I’ll have plenty to do.”

  He didn’t answer her. He pulled up at the front door and stopped. He started to get out and open the door for her, but she was quicker.

  “Thanks for driving me up to the school,” she said and smiled as she ran quickly to the front door.

  He could see through her. She was hurting, upset, shocked by what had happened, and he’d treated it more like a joke than like the trauma it probably was to her. She had no experience with men. He should have explained it better than that. But he couldn’t take the chance that she’d see it as a beginning. He’d had one relationship, before his life was shattered. He wanted no more of them. Ever.

  He parked the car at the back door and walked into the house. Darwin Grayling was waiting there. He saw the car and exploded.

  “What the hell happened? Is Isabel all right?” he burst out.

  “We got caught in a downburst. At least that’s what the weather guys called it. A limb came right through the back windshield. It stopped short of us, but Miss Grayling is pretty upset.” He never used her name or her nickname with her father.

  “Thank God.” Darwin let out a breath. “You’ll handle all that…?” He waved a hand at the car.

  “Yes, sir. I’ll get the insurance company right on it.”

  “Let that wait. I need to speak to you. Come into my study, please.”

  Paul followed him, his teeth grinding together. Surely the man didn’t have cameras in the car, or upstairs, that Paul didn’t know about. If he did, this was going to be a very short trip. He’d be grilled and fired on the spot if Grayling had any inkling of what had really gone on inside that car after the downburst hit. Or if there was a hidden camera in Paul’s bedroom. He could picture Grayling’s reaction if he knew that Isabel often spent time in Paul’s bedroom—on Paul’s bed—to talk to him late at night in just a gown and a robe…

  Darwin closed the door with a snap and turned to Paul. He wasn’t smiling. “How much do you know about that police officer who’s been flirting with Isabel in Barbara’s Cafe?” he asked at once.

  Paul’s mind was in limbo. The question came out of left field and he was unprepared for it. “There’s nothing going on there, sir. He has lunch at the café and Isabel’s talked to him a time or two when she had lunch in town with one of Blake Kemp’s employees. That’s all it is. I don’t think she’s been around him more than once or twice.”

  “You don’t think,” Darwin said angrily. “You make sure he keeps his distance,” he added curtly. “My daughter is off-limits to any man, but especially one who’s an undercover federal officer!”

  “A Fed?” Paul feigned surprise.

  “Yes, a Fed,” came the short reply. “I had him checked out.” His eyes narrowed. “Something you should have thought to do the minute you heard Isabel was letting him flirt with her!”

  He caught his breath. “Sir, if I’d thought he was a threat…”

  “He is a threat, Fiore!” he returned, his face reddening. “Any man I don’t choose for my daughters is a threat! I’m not losing one penny of what I own to some grubby little lawman who looks at my daughter and sees himself set for life! They’re mine! I’ve spent a small fortune keeping them safe from fortune hunters while I find the right husbands for them! Merrie’s too young, but Isabel will be married when she’s twenty-five. I have a prince picked out for her. He’s wealthy and his brothers have all produced sons, so he’s a good match. I must have heirs, so that Graylings doesn’t go into the ground with me.”

  Paul was shocked. He didn’t know how to react. He just stared at the older man while he searched for a reply that wouldn’t get him fired.

  Darwin looked at his watch and grimaced. “I have to be in Finland for trade talks. I’ll be away for at least two weeks. Don’t delegate your responsibility to any other security person. You take Isabel anywhere she wants to go, but you watch her! And if that Fed shows any more interest in her, you get her out of that café if you have to carry her out, is that clear?”

  “Yes, sir,” Paul said curtly.

  “I’ll hold you responsible if she gets involved with anyone, too,” Darwin added.

  “I’ll remember, sir,” Paul said.

  “See that you do. Have Morris drive me to the airport. You keep an eye on Isabel,” he added curtly.

  “I’ll do that.”

  Darwin waved a hand, indicating that his security chief was dismissed. Paul left the room, hiding his expression. He wanted to tear the man apart with his bare hands. Marry Isabel to some foreign prince as breeding stock for the next generation? The man was insane!

  He walked outside to get some fresh air and lifted his face to the breeze. Grubby little Fed, he’d called the lawman in town. Grubby. That was how Darwin Grayling pictured anyone without money. That included Paul. No commoner was good enough for his daughters. No, they must marry money. It didn’t matter what the man who had the money looked like, either. He could be old and fat and bald and it wouldn’t matter. Isabel must marry within her class.

  Why did it bother him so much to know that? He was aware of the differences. He wasn’t lining up to court Isabel, to win her, to marry her. Marry. He closed his eyes and shivered. He couldn’t bear to think about marriage again.

  So why was he picturing Isabel in white? Because she’d be walking down the aisle in it, looking like a fairy princess. Isabel had a white dress that she often wore to church—one of the few venues that the girls were allowed to attend. The dress had a tight bodice and a full skirt, and it drifted around Isabel’s long legs when she walked, giving teasing glimpses of the long, beautiful legs underneath. He loved her in white. It emphasized the amazing color of those long, curly red-gold locks and her blue, blue eyes.

  He wanted to deck Darwin Grayling.

  * * *

  He was still wearing that cold, angry expression when Mandy started putting supper on the table, several hours later.

  “And what’s the matter with you?” Mandy chided. “A man who’s escaped certain death should look happier.”

  “It’s listening to that man talk about auctioning Isabel off to some foreign prince as breeding stock,” he muttered. “Merrie, too, of course,” he add
ed, so that he didn’t give her the idea that it was only Isabel for whose welfare he was concerned.

  “Money marries money,” she said simply. “That’s the way the world is, Mr. Paul.”

  He drew in a long breath and picked up a piece of celery from the appetizers she’d just put on the table. He shoved it into his mouth.

  “Don’t spoil your appetite,” she chided.

  He chuckled. “You sound like my grandmother,” he replied. “I was forever stealing little bits of food from the table when she set it. Of course, at our house it was bread and olive oil rather than raw veggies.”

  “You miss your grandmother a lot, don’t you?” she asked kindly.

  He drew in a long breath and crunched the celery before he answered. “Mandy, in my whole life, she’s the only human being who ever really loved me,” he confessed. He smiled wistfully. “None of the ones who came after did, except…” He stopped there. He couldn’t bear the memory. Blood. So much blood! His eyes closed, trying to shut out the memory.

  He felt a soft hand on his arm. “I made a nice supper,” she said, drawing him back. “You have to stop looking back, Mr. Paul. The world is bright and beautiful. The path ahead is sweet.”

  He made a face. “Sweet. Sure. Sweet like vinegar.”

  She hit him. “Cut that out. You’ll curdle the milk in my nice pudding.”

  He laughed. “Mandy, you’re a tonic.”

  “Glad you think so.” She went back into the kitchen and returned with a pan of rolls and a small plate with butter.

  “Rolls!” he exclaimed. “You sweetheart!”

  “After your close call, I thought you and Miss Isabel might like something special. I made macaroni and cheese, too.” She indicated the big square dish on the table.

  “I have truly died and gone to heaven,” he assured her. “Uh, could you wait a bit to call the others?” he added, tugging the casserole toward him.

  Mandy laughed out loud. “Oh, Mr. Paul, shame on you!”

  She went to call the girls down to the supper table, still laughing.